Eye to Eye Page 11

  “One second.”

  “Jesus,” Ian says. “You are so, like, annoying,” he tells me before he leaves the room.

  And because I can’t take another moment of Laguna Beach, I go wait for Earl outside.

  I listen hard for the sound of Earl’s hog so that I can buzz him in. His bike is so loud, though, there’s probably no avoiding it. If I find it strange that I’m pulling up here in my Honda two days a week, Earl looks positively surreal sitting on his Harley with a big grin on his face and a blue bandana wrapped around his head.

  “Fancy doin’s,” he says after he turns off the bike. “I mean,” he says, and whistles slow and long.

  “I know.” I come down the steps and give him a kiss. “My shitty car,” I pout, pointing at it.

  “Now you ought not talk about your baby that way,” he says, grinning. “We’ll get it working and acting the way it ought to. But we’re going to have to leave it here for a bit.”

  Leave it here? Hmm. I hadn’t thought of that. I don’t think the Bernsteins would dig my car junking up their driveway. “I don’t know about that, Earl. I don’t know if I can.”

  “’Course you can.” Earl gets off his bike and pops the hood of my car for the cursory “look-see,” as he calls these sorts of things. “I can’t quite see what all the trouble’s about on my own. We’re going to have to tow it.”

  Goodbye money. “Damn, Earl, that’ll cost a hell of a lot of dough.”

  “Cain’t be helped, baby, unless you got something else on your mind to do.”

  Can’t say that I do. I keep looking at Earl, who keeps looking at my car and chewing on his bottom lip. I get distracted by his dimples. They take the edge off a lot of things, those dimples. But then Ian comes to the door that I forgot and left wide-open.

  “Hey,” Ian hollers. He looks at me, and then at Earl. “The mechanic came already?”

  Whoa. Earl looks Ian over, cool and even. Then he says, “I’m Earl.”

  “My boyfriend,” I blurt, so Ian doesn’t say anything else that’s fucked up. Earl’s not too touchy a guy. However, he’s already noted, I’m sure, that Ian doesn’t put him with me, and that’s irked him some, no doubt, now that I know that he’s much more sensitive about this stuff than I thought.

  Ian squints his eyes at me as though I’m trying to sell him something he’s not interested in buying. Then he notices Earl’s bike, admires it really, and then I see him take in everything Earl’s wearing. The bandana, the biker boots, the black T-shirt and the leather bracelet I gave him when we went to the bluegrass festival in Bean Blossom, Indiana. It has EARL burned into the leather.

  “Your boyfriend?”

  “That’s right,” Earl says, no smile on his face. He’s heard me complain about Ian, like, every day since I’ve had the job, and so he’s not having any of Ian’s cuteness. I want to warn Ian, in a way, but every man for himself. If he wants to talk shit with the big boys, he’s got to get shit from the big boys.

  But, as Ian so delicately put it, he’s not mentally challenged, so he plays it cool. “Nice to meet you,” he says, coming down the stairs and shaking Earl’s hand.

  “Likewise.” Earl grips Ian’s hand and Ian winces just a tiny bit. Earl gives Ian’s hand a couple of good pumps that throws his puny sixteen-year-old body around some. Makes me unreasonably happy, I have to say.

  “So, I’m going to have to leave my car here, only overnight. I hope it’s okay.” And then, because I hate that I sound as though I’m asking him for permission, I say, “I hope it’s okay, with your parents, I mean.”

  Ian keeps his eyes on Earl. “They’ll live.”

  “All right, then,” Earl murmurs, and then he gives me the helmet that he was not wearing. I’ll remember to holler at him about that later. L.A. is no two-lane country highway like the ones Earl was used to riding on. He could get killed by some Escalade-driving, cell-phone talking, TV-watching moron not paying attention to the road.

  “So thanks, Ian. Please tell your parents what the deal is?”

  He nods. “I’ll tell them.” And then before Earl starts up the bike and pulls away, Ian gives me a shit-eating grin that means he’s up to something—or going to be up to something.

  Later that night I complain to Doris on the phone about Ian and how amused he seemed by me and Earl—together.

  “He’s a child,” Doris argues. I can hear the TV in the background. “Like you care.” She pauses. “Do you care?”

  “Of course not,” I reply, maybe a little too quickly. “It just bugs me, all this assumption about who belongs with whom. What happened to the melting pot and all that bullshit?”

  “It’s a salad now. Not a melted pot of soup or whatever. You’re supposed to enjoy all the separate tastes, not blend them all together so that it tastes like some ass-y vegetable smoothie.”

  “Smoothie, salad, dim sum. Whatever the hell, it’s all tedious. Speaking of such nonsense, I told my Burning Spear editor that I’m accepting their offer and that I’ll do the changes they asked for.”

  “Shut up,” Doris says. I can tell she’s lowering the volume of her TV. “Are you sure—”

  “Do you want cornrows or dreadlocks?” I get up to pour myself a glass of Charles Swab, a $1.99 bottle of wine from Trader Joe’s. It’s a far cry from Francis Coppola, but broke asses can’t be choosers. I guess Doris hears me pouring.

  “What are you drinking, anyway?”

  “Two buck Chuck.”

  “Damn. You and Earl have got to make more money.”

  “I get six thousand dollars for the book,” I say, sipping on my wine.

  “Afro,” Doris says. “Give me an afro. And cash that check as soon as you get it.”

  doris

  The Transcendentalists: A still-influential and deeply counter-cultural group of writers from the mid-nineteenth century. Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau being the two most famous transcendentalists, influenced a whole wake of writers from Melville to Nietzsche. Emerson advocated that the individual, instead of looking to the outside world for models and advice, should look inside and trust the “core self.” Inside each person, he believed, was a touch of divinity, accessible only to those who shut out the clamor of the present day’s fads, and instead, trust their own interior truth. Father of today’s dreamers and tree-huggers, God bless him.

  The nice thing about teaching is that for every Paige Prentiss there is a Tommy “T” Evans. T. not only enriches class discussion, but has become the closest thing that I have to a friend on campus. He busted me the second week of classes, during office hours, reading my favorite style blog, “GoFug Yourself,” and rather than thinking less of me, we now talk equally about Emersonian ideals and Britney Spears’s fashion choices. I’m not sure Emerson would approve, but it does make my life easier.

  T. sticks his head in my office and says, “loved the essay,” before disappearing for his next class. I give him the thumbs-up, and return to my class prep.

  I love to teach Emerson because he stands so staunchly in contrast to much of what Americans value today. In fact, I venture to say that, while Franklin might have a grand old time were he zapped back from the 1700s to now, Emerson would probably build a compound in the Montana woods, only to be rooted out by the government as dangerous and incendiary. When Emerson warns us that consistency is bad, I think, ha, the original flip-flopper! And when he holds up the truly successful individual as one who shifts careers and interests his entire life, I think, job jumper, never gonna have a career! Everything about Emerson runs so counter to our present way of thinking that it’s no wonder my students look at me as though I’ve presented them with stone tablets when reading one of Emerson’s most famous essays, “Self-Reliance.” And I just love him for it.

  My favorite Emersonian moment, though, came today when Paige claimed that Emerson is the sort of man who made terrorism possible. T. turned ten shades of purple, and I decided that now I had, in fact, officially heard everything. Driving home from
work, I call Ronnie to let her know about my latest run-in.

  “Long time,” I say. “What’s the news on Bita?”

  She fills me in, and I feel temporarily grateful that I am merely single and alone.

  “How’s the chilrens?” Ronnie asks.

  I tuck the cell-phone under my chin and try to find an opening in traffic.

  “My favorite conversation. Paige Prentiss informed me that if one were to take Emerson seriously, then one could justify terrorist action, if it were one’s internal truth.”

  “So it’s true what they say,” Ronnie banters, “A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.”

  A BMW convertible swerves in front of me, passing on the right and almost causing five kinds of accident.

  “Good lord. I think I should start practicing at the local arcade to survive the streets of Atlanta. The way people drive here is simply not normal.”

  “Try L.A.”

  “No, thanks. I think my poor Corolla would be laughed right off the Hollywood Hills. Anyhow, because I’m evil, I just let Paige believe that Emerson, indeed, might support terrorist action, because it’s not totally far from what he’s saying. It’s just sort of a misrepresentation. Gives her something to report back to the junior fascist league of America, get another bar on her swastika.”

  Ronnie laughs. “Any more word from them?”

  “Not for me. Evidently, I’m behaving, but my colleague, Asa, got a pretty creepy note. Same creepy lettering, but it just said ‘THAT’S TWO. YOU’RE ALMOST OUT.’ It wasn’t even so much what it said, as that she was out in the parking lot, and started looking for her keys, and somehow between her looking for the keys and opening her door, the note appeared under the windshield wiper. She said there were plenty of people around, and she couldn’t believe that she didn’t notice. Creepy, creepy, creeepeeeee. She was really shook-up. I don’t think she even knows what she did.”

  “Does the administration do anything?”

  “No,” I say, flipping on my turn signal and pulling into my apartment complex. “You know that they’re not so much students these days as paying customers. If they want every hour to be the children’s hour, so long as they’re not waving machetes, the administration acts like we’re overreacting.”

  “How depressing.”

  “It is. I’ll call you tomorrow. I’m supposed to have wine with Toni tonight, she’s going to help me with my Internet profile and following up on my speed-dating matches.”

  “So no word from Zach?”

  “You mean other than ‘goodbye,’ and ‘I have to change Lolita’s diapers’? No, not much follow up. It’s really too depressing to get into. I hate him and I miss him at the exact same time, and probably in equal parts. I’ve decided instead of just sitting around and wallowing and getting fat, I’m going to date. I might even get fat on dates, but at least it’s social obesity.”

  “That’s great, Doris.”

  “Oooooh. And I almost forgot. I got a call from one Dr. Antonius Block, asking me if I’d like to have tea with him at his home in Virginia Highland. Doesn’t that sound so Southern and civilized that you can barely stand it? I haven’t even seen him this semester, but I do gaze fondly at his Anthony Hopkins-esque picture looking down on me as I enter the building. Do you know how much I worship that man’s work?”

  Ronnie musters an unenthusiastic, “Yes.”

  “I know you hate him.”

  “I don’t hate him. I don’t know him. I just don’t connect with his work. I think he’d be writing about the darkies loooving old Savannah if Martin Luther King hadn’t come around.”

  I almost run off the road pretending to cover my ears.

  “No. That’s just speculation. He could be secretly and totally progressive now. Maybe he’s had a change of heart.”

  “Because that happens so frequently.”

  “I’m not talking to you. And what was it that woman said in Miss Lonelyhearts by Nathaniel West? That you’re the nastiest kind of woman, one who won’t let me cherish my illusions.”

  “Okay, Doris. I’m wrong. You and Block are going to sip mint juleps and talk about third-wave feminism and then at the end of the evening sing We Shall Overcome.”

  “Har-har,” I say. “Back to the demon child for you.”

  Here is one of the secret, true confessions of Doris Weatherall. You know when you read those articles about high-powered folks who’ve spent their whole lives gaybashing and whatnot, and then you read some tabloid that details how they’ve been found dead in women’s stockings with an orange in their mouth and leather chaps on the bed? You know those articles? Well, I never read them with surprise, and not only because I’m a cynic, but because I understand inconsistency. Yes, as I’ve said, God bless Emerson. So as I approach the doorstep of Antonius Block’s outrageously beautiful three-story Tara-esque mansion, I am fully aware of my own hypocricy. I’m like Jodie Foster’s character in Silence of the Lambs, hypnotically drawn to the ever so slightly evil genius of the oh so talented if slighty misogynistic Antonius Block. And did I mention, to further dig my own grave, that he’s kind of hot in a Kevin Spacey, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil kind of way? I have dolled up extra-girly and extra-pretty for tea today. Pink lip gloss, a yellow-and-red sundress with a three-quarter-length sweater—the way I always imagined Southern sorority girls dressed before I knew they mostly dress like every other teenager.

  I bang gently on the oak door, and marvel at the minigarden growing on the porch, when a girl who looks my age, maybe younger, opens the door and lets me in the house.

  “Hello. You must be Doris. We’ve been expecting you. Come in.”

  She’s pretty in an androgynous way, with a pixie haircut and Katherine Hepburn–style trousers hanging off her hipbones. “I hope you’re settling into the department. I know that it can be a real snakepit.”

  “It’s okay so far,” I tell her, fanning my dress beneath me and perching myself at the edge of a large leather chair.

  Antonius Block enters the room and kisses the woman on the mouth. She gives him a playful pat on the ass (I am not making this up), and he says to me, in a matter-of-fact Southern drawl, “Now, you’ve met Vera. She was my student, she’s now my wife. And you’re among the first to hear that piece of news, although I’ve no doubt you’ve heard rumors of our involvement.”

  Both of them are grinning like the cat who caught the canary, and I am thinking three things at once: 1) Please, God, let him mean his ex-graduate student; 2) how totally and tragically obvious; 3) Dammit, now I don’t get to be child bride number four. Curses on the pixie!

  “Congratulations,” I say. “That’s wonderful.”

  He gives me a smirk that’s half self-congratulatory, and half lets me know that he knows that I’m probably judging him. Which I totally am.

  “Love is a wonderful thing, Doris. Don’t let too many years teaching English teach you otherwise. Love and the other humanistic virtues. I know it’s not in favor, but I do believe that the universals will prevail. Long after the fad for sub-par voices from the fringe falls by the wayside. I do hope that you’ll continue to incorporate some of the classics into your reading list. I worry so when I see that a class contains only voices from this last sad century. So much is lost dwelling only on the recent past.”

  Now, if Antonius Block were one of my students we would be about to engage in a heated debate about what, exactly he meant by “sub par voices from the fringe” and “this last, sad century” as opposed to those other fabulous centuries of slavery, war and imperialist conquest. However, PC-Doris knows that Antonius Block is super-senior faculty, and therefore at the absolute top of the list of people not to piss off if one knows what’s good for one’s nontenured ass. She is also two percent seduced by the lulling surety of his voice, falling, Eva Braun style, for the charisma underneath the evil. Bad, bad Doris!

  I almost hear myself say, “I don’t know nothin’ ’bout teaching no commies, or dahkies, or silly bitches with pens
,” but quell the cry for sarcasm deep within my soul. Emerson would be very ashamed. Instead I say, “I always try to teach Keats and Dickinson. You can’t go wrong with Keats and Dickinson.”

  “And Byron, for chrissakes,” Antonius chimes in. “Do you know what Byron can mean to a young mind? Honey,” he says, not quite looking at Vera, “would you mind bringing us some bourbon. Neat. Two glasses.”

  “Midafternoon boozing,” I say. “Gotta love the South.”

  “Doris,” he whispers, all but leering in my direction. “We are going to talk about poetry. Poetry until the darkness swallows up our tiny pinhole of light in this godforsaken city.”

  For some reason, I can only imagine Zach standing behind him, sticking a finger down his imaginary throat and mouthing poets, like the word held all the toxicity of anthrax. Antonius Block is one bourbon shy of becoming a total parody of himself—the old dude who watched Dead Poet’s Society about ten too many times, and doesn’t quite get that it’s the voices from the fringe that are around to stay, and that he’s the fading part of the canon. Or maybe he does get that—thus the bourbon, thus the child bride.

  But since Zach isn’t here, and I actually enjoyed Dead Poet’s Society the first two times I watched it, I tell myself, “When in Rome…” and make the next bourbon a double.

  It’s a good thing that I don’t teach on Fridays because the next day I am tragically hungover, with all the postalcoholic gloom and doom that said state occasionally entails. I knock on the walls, which is now code for Toni to come on over if she likes. I think we’re developing a Mary Richards, Rhoda–type bond, but I am unfortunately and definitely the Rhoda of the equation.

  “I spent an evening with a sixty-year-old,” I tell her. “And I thought, good freaking lord, in his mind, I’m probably already too old for him. Not that I liked him. I mean, he’s a total fascist, he’s just kind of a hot fascist.”

  “Age ain’t nothin’ but a number,” Toni says, sidling beside me and pointing to the ad for singles on Match.com flashing across the screen of my laptop.